The healthcare industry provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care. The modern healthcare sector is divided into many sub-sectors, and depends on interdisciplinary teams of trained professionals and paraprofessionals to meet health needs of individuals and populations. The healthcare industry is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing industries. Consuming over ten percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations, healthcare can form an enormous part of a country's economy. Currently, the United States spends over seventeen percent of GDP on healthcare, and this amount is expected to grow at a nearly six percent annual rate. Many attempts have been made to slow down, and eventually reverse, this increase in healthcare spending, however, most attempts have failed or have not had an impact as yet. Contributing to the cost impacts, healthcare is often provided at later stages of illness—based on current technologies and applications—rather than on earlier stages of illness, where care would be less intensive and costs would be much lower.